Christina's crafts, dedicated to Kerrie

Some crafts would never have been taken on without the influence of someone else - in my life, my friend Kerrie is frequently a direct (and indirect) source of inspiration. She is the one who started me making soap, and who has supplied many of my scrapbooking embellishments. More recently (okay, over a year ago) she found a rocking chair near a church with a "free" sign on it. She couldn't pass it up, but asked us if we were interested. We definitely were - the catch was, it had a broken seat, where the caning had been ripped apart. After spending about a year thinking about the many ways this could be repaired (buying new caning, learning to cane, cutting out the cane and replacing it with a wooden seat, etc.) Kerrie inspired me with another of her favorite crafts - crochet. Here is a picture of the chair as we first ran nylon cord all around the intact parts of caning. Then, I superglued the caning near to this nylon cord to make sure the caning didn't unravel any more.




Then, the single crochet started. I went all the way across doing single crochet, about the rate of an inch an hour. You can tell that this took some steady time in front of the tv (oh, my suffering!)

Finally, I had my own pseudo-caning in artificial nylon:

This, I determined, was just for structural purposes. Luckily, a trip to Linens and Things yielded a seat cushion which sits very steadily over my handicraft, and the seat is now fully functional!



Inspired by Kerrie that crocheting may in fact be superior to knitting in many ways (um, especially the speed and the odd shapes you can make on purpose with crochet!) I decided to try making a star blanket for our one-day-to-be baby. We're getting rid of the carpeting upstairs, and I decided a baby needed to have something to play on that wasn't hard. Yes. And also, I found a new yarn store and fell in love with new yarn, so also that. Using the pattern here
and new yarn ( heathered green and a heathered blue in the very soft but affordable Plymouth Yarn Encore, and indulging with the beautiful Italian Tonalita colorway) I made this:





It was so much fun - not just doing the star, but using the Tonalita in between color changes. I never knew which color was going to come up next, and it was a nice change from my usual drab colors (yes, see the green and the blue). I always envy the colors Kerrie picks, and I thought she might approve of the bright interspersed in here.

That's the crafting as of late! Yarn has been my thing, but now that it's spring we're moving back into the garden, so hopefully there will be some things to show there soon.

An Easter Craft for Suki

I saw this amigurumi rabbit and knew I wanted to make it!

It's all single crochet, and pretty straightforward even if mine did turn out different than the pattern. The arms seem a little shorter and I think the body is overstuffed.

I love this little tail, though! I suspect Grace may swipe it from Suki for a little while :)

An Easter Craft for Grace

I saw these bunny beanbags and wanted to make some for Grace for her Easter basket. They were so cute! And, I reckoned, pretty simple to make. I traced the circles out of felt (brown or white for the top, a contrasting color for the bottom). I made a little pattern for the ears and cut those out of the contrast color, too. Then I stitched the ears on the top layer, embroidered some eyes, and made a pompom to sew on for the tail. The bunnies got stitched together and stuffed with polofin pellets. Points taken away because those pellets are supposed to be used only for decorative items, not played with items, but Grace will play with these in my sight and as you know, she's not one to put things in her mouth anyway.

Here are my half dozen bunnies, all finished and put to bed in their little grass lined box.

Detail of the ears and eyes.

And the wee tail -- I used the handle of a spatula to wind around to make these. It's about an inch wide.

My little rabbits. I call them Sleepy, Devil Bunny, Halloweenie, Tropicana, Angel Bunny and Chocolata. I had way too much time on my hands during the stitching, that's all I can say about that. Possibly I am losing it from lack of sleep.

Then I covered a box in felt to put them in -- here's the lid, with a stuffed bunny attached to the top. These were easy to make and so adorable! If I do say so myself :)